Robotics design, gadgets, hacks, and DIY technology.

I started learning ROS (the Robot Operating System) some time ago and I have to say it is an awesome system. It makes it very easy to reuse code for robotic projects and to benefit from tons of work done in robotics so far.

ROSCon 2012

When I saw that Willow Garage (and now the OSRF) organized ROSCon, a ROS developer conference, I couldn’t help but assist. Needless to say, it was a blast, I had the chance to learn a lot, and got a bunch of robotic swag.

See the slideshow below for some pictures of the talks , robots and Saint Paul (MN), the city where it took place.

I was very lucky to have been interviewed by Nora Young for Spark, a CBC podcast about new technologies. This news is a bit late though because this was for the March 25th edition of the show, but nonetheless, I think it is good to document it here.

Nora Young From CBC Spark

You can listen to the full interview here. It is about MyRobots.com and the concept of a social network for robots.

Using the Google Speech-to-Text behaviour, I created an interface to access the Wolfram|Alpha knowledge engine through Nao 1337. As shown in the video below, Nao can now be used to answer very important existential questions about memes.

If you remember, for last year’s Robot Film Festival, Nao 1337 walked the red carpet by holding my hand. I took some time in order to better document the behaviour, improve it a bit and make a video description of it that you can see below.